Dealer's Hand
by Darkwood
Summary: Follows "Cat and Mouse".
1. I

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -I-**

"That's some dangerous company you've been keeping, Miss Kaplan."

It was his hands. The sympathetic feeling of the hand he placed on my neck, and the warmth of the gesture. That's what brought me down. The cards left marks in my back on the sheets, clung to sticky skin, and afterwards he bundled the two of us up in the top sheet, cards and all. The slight paper cuts from the edges of the cards didn't seem to matter, not with the rough feel of his hands embracing my bare back. I can still feel them, even now, dressed quickly and bundled into the car.

"My name is Faye. And if you've been keeping as close an eye on me as I think you have, you should know that it's company I've been keeping for quite a while now." I lean back, crossing my legs. The dark haired man who ushered me into the waiting car at the end of the alley is not as completely unaffected by it as he would like to be.

Hiding out together, it was inevitable. In retrospect, it was, perhaps, a mistake. But at the same time I know that it can't have been. It is… what I wanted from him the whole time, since I'd been back. Since he came looking for me.

I wish I'd had time to take a shower. Scent of Spike is clinging to me, and it's distracting. But I don't suppose I really had the time, what with the dark haired man and his cohorts kicking the door in and waving guns around in the air. The scent of a gun is one scent of insistence that even I can't ignore.

The dark haired man sits up a little straighter in the seat opposite me, and the car pulls away from the alley. To my credit, I don't look behind me.

I don't _hear_ any explosions. But they may have just left someone behind to put a bullet in his infuriatingly attractive forehead. Actually, it's not really all that attractive, when I think of it. It's sharp, flat, and harsh.

"So, what's your name?" I ask, finally, tired of sitting in silence and stewing in my own thoughts. Smell invokes memory and if I keep thinking about him I _will_ go crazy.

"Mine?" I give him a pointed look. Even he can't be so slow. "Spencer."

"That's it? Just Spencer?"

"It's all anyone calls me." He lifts a hand to adjust the collar of his shirt.

I have never understood why men who carry guns and exploit people for a living feel the urge to wear a business suit. There's very little business in killing someone. You pull a trigger. They die. Or they bleed and _then_ they die.

"All right then, Spencer… just who are you taking me to see?"

"Your great nephew, Miss Kaplan."

"My great what?"

He gives me a pointed look this time, arching a brow over his brown eyes as though he usually wears sunglasses. "I don't care to repeat myself," he says, ending the conversation. I sigh and close my eyes again. I try to piece together what could've happened so long ago with Spike and the syndicate. The Red Dragons.

But I can't.

I should be able to, but I don't think I can.

And the one question I had to ask him about that I wasted on something else. On someone who isn't alive anymore. A ghost that's no realer than anything else from that time. But then none of that is real anymore. And what's the point in chasing shadows?

Rather than trying to talk to Spencer any more, I turn and look out the window. It's getting dark. We weren't even in hiding a day and we got separated. Some hideout that was. I'm sure when I get back, Spike will tell me that next time he gets to pick where we hide. And then I remember what Spencer said. The White Tigers aren't the only ones after Spike.

"Who else is after Spike?" I ask.

Jolted out of his silent reverence by my voice, Spencer sits up abruptly straight and loosens his collar a little bit.

"You didn't say it just to make me come with you, because you know that wouldn't have worked on me. So spit it out. Who else is after him?" I say what words ought to be the truth, whether they are or not.

"The Red Dragons," comes the hushed reply, as though he's afraid he'll bring up some dangerous and malicious spirit by speaking the name of the other branch of the Syndicate family.

"What?"

"I'm sure your nephew will explain what sort of a situation this really is."

I shake my head, angrily, the only thing in my mind the Chamber where the Red Dragons like to hold their executions. "Give me a straight answer."

He swallows. "I'm not entirely sure, really," he admits with shame in his voice. "All I know is the rumors."

Despite what I ought to have used my question for, to make sense out of what I've apparently chosen to hand fasten myself into, I don't care. I wanted to know the answer to what I asked.

And there are other ways to learn what he would have told me.

"Well then tell me those."


	2. II

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -II-**

I lean back in the bed, staring at the ceiling. I wait for some subtle tension to develop in my muscles, something to tell me there's a bomb somewhere and that I should be scrambling for my clothes and the door.

But nothing comes.

The communicator in my coat beeps and I fish it out. Jette.

"Spike, about Faye-"

"What about her?" He starts to speak, but I cut him off. "Yeah, I know. Thanks for the tip, Jette."

"You disabled the locator in the communicator?"

"Just like you'd have suggested, right?"

"Suggesting things out loud to you never worked before. Besides, I always thought you'd be smart enough not to need me to remind you of something so basic as that."

I chuckle. "Yeah, I guess you would."

He laughs with me for a moment.

"They took her, Jette."

"Which side?"

"The White Tigers."

"Could be worse."

I throw my legs over the side of the bed and stand, moving to dress myself, slowly, deliberately. I like the feel of the marks she and the sex left on my skin. The scent of her that lingers. "The Red Dragons can't be far behind," I add, pulling my tank top on. I shrug into my shirt and head over to the large mirror in the bathroom.

My reflection stares back at me, and I wonder how long I've been looking this lost. Did I look like this when I was talking to the Red Dragon that came after me on Venus? The one who tried to hurt Faye to get to me?

Well no wonder. I deserved to get knocked around if that's how I looked. "How's the ship doing, Jette?"

"The Bebop? It's fine. Why do you ask?"

"I don't think there's any use in me running from them anymore. Hiding isn't my style." I glance back at the bed, and pick up one of the cards, lifting it to my nose. It smells just like her.

"I was wondering when you were going to say that."

"Am I really so predictable?"

"Yes," he says. "I haven't moved the ship. Meet me in the harbor and we'll take off." I hear the noise of switches being flipped. "Spike."

"Yeah?"

"What about Faye?"

"It's the fastest way I can think of to getting her back," I say, turning off the communicator as I climb into my pants and look around, momentarily, for my shoes. Bending down to check under the bed, I find them, and as I pull them on, I find there's a card sticking in one of them.

The Ace of Spades.


	3. III

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -III-**

I never realized how empty the ship was when no one else was on it. After Ed and Ein left, and it was just Spike and me for so long again after Faye took off, I sort of got used to it. Just the two of us.

And there was a lot less to think about, when it was just the two of us. But I knew, somehow, that it couldn't stay that way. As much as Spike would like to play the lone cowboy, he's not. Not old enough, not hurt enough for that.

But then, I guess I'm not either. I might not see the same things in Faye as he does, but at the same time, I needed her around, as much as I needed Ed and Ein. There's what seems like an old picture of the five of us, now, in my bonsai room. It sits just behind the middle shelf, where only I can see it.

Spike doesn't go in there, and Faye never did unless something was wrong. Or unless she had something to tell me. She doesn't now. Can't.

I never realized how different all of us were. How far apart we really were from one another, until now.

Spike climbs through the hatch onto the bridge.

"We've got to go back to Mars," he says.

"We don't _have_ to do anything."

He steps over to the window. "Remember when you said that you had something that you had to take care of… Alisa, that was her name."

"Leave her out of this." I glare at him. "Faye's your problem. You spent months trying to make her my problem. Now that she's yours, suddenly it's _our_ responsibility to take _my_ ship and go deal with it?"

"You're leaving her out of it now." He doesn't look up at me, instead he lays a hand across the back of my seat, which is empty for the moment.

I can almost see her leaning there with a saucy expression and her legs crossed. The heels of her boots are on the console.

The image, in its familiarity, is disturbing.

I frown.

"I didn't say that."

He trails his hand along the seat, and finally turns to look at me. His eyes are serious, honest.

"She wasn't my idea. And she wasn't yours." He grins. "That's the thing about women like Faye, Jette. You don't plan for them. They happen into your life like some self-important stray animal that you're not quite sure needs you, and you end up not letting them go."

I fold my arms, still not quite convinced. "And you going to Mars and getting your ass blown off has what to do with your stray-animal theory about Faye?"

"I'm not going to get my ass blown off, Jette."

"You're not immortal, you know."

"I've only ever met one person who thought they were, Jette." His face sobers and his eyes tell me it all, and I remember.

That kid… Wen.

Spike never said what happened to the kid, except that he died. And that means he was just being cocky about not being able to die, about escaping time. No one can escape time.

Spike seems to, a lot, lives through things he oughtn't be able to…

"A little too sure," Spike affirms, seeing that I have understood. "I know what I am and what I am not. And I am not what the Red Dragons are looking for."

"They seem to think otherwise."

"They are mistaken."

"Faye's one of them, you know. She might not look it, or act like it, but she is. At heart. Her father was one back before she was cryogenically frozen. That sort of thing has never been cheap, you know."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

The grin is back on his face. The impossible, helpless grin. He wears it whenever he's doing something that amuses him. Death seems to amuse him sometimes, and I thought he had nothing left to live for, but now… now I'm not so sure.

"Now will you take me to Mars, or do I have to go alone?"

"I'll take you to Mars."


	4. IV

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -IV-**

I've always known there was something wrong with me. I just never quite figured that it was something like this.

The White Tiger headquarter building is just as impressive as the Red Dragon one that Spike decided to blow sky high. But, where the Red Dragons' building looked modern on the outside, just another sky scraper to the ISSP, the White Tiger building is much more traditional.

None of the façade matters.

Everyone knows better than to mistake places like this one. And in the nighttime, the building we pull up to is pristine in the moonlight. It stands apart from the crowded streets and the neon lights we've been driving through.

My eyes still recall the colored streaks on the windows from the glow even in the abrupt absence of the city commotion. The front entrance is impressive. Large pillars and a shallows set of steps leading up to the front entrance. Something obvious very old was thought of when they designed this place.

My family is part Russian, after all. I vaguely remember my father speaking very proudly of our heritage. It was one of those things that he was proud of, in ways that I never understood.

The short black limousine pulls up in front of the building and stops, the tall pillars encasing the outer steps that lead up to the new-fashioned sliding doors. Spencer opens the door of the car and holds it for me, very formally.

He acts as though I am coming home, but that's unrealistic.

Home has to be somewhere you know to return to.

Somewhere it feels like you belong.

And Spike's not here.

"About time," I mutter, standing up and getting out.

Spencer catches my wrist, gently. I turn to look at him.

"I thought we went through this and I told you not to touch me."

"Your gun, Miss Faye. Even you aren't allowed to bring weapons inside. Yet."

Rolling my eyes, I hand it over, playing along. The faster I get this over with, the faster I can get out of here.

"This way," he says, handing the gun discretely to the doorman as we head up the shallow front steps. Overhead, the pillars support a thick slab of carved rock that serves to shade us from the moonlight.

As though you needed shade from such a thing. Moonlight is harmless.

I hate doing this sort of a meeting at night. It always makes it seem much more dangerous.

Inside, there is a large lobby with a marble floor. Trickles of gray thread through it, giving it color, but it looks like monotone blood spilled across the white stone of the floor. It still looks old. But like old death.

The whole place looks like that to me. Like death. But always ancient looking. Claim verifying. My father had a lot to prove. Apparently the rest of the family carried on that for him.

Our footsteps echo as we cross the dead expanse, heading up the stairs that wrap around the edges of the lobby like two embracing arms. The inside of the building is as new as anything else around.

So much for antiquity.

Once up the stairs, I'm lead down a small, dim corridor to a room with a magnificently carved set of doors. Spencer opens them, formally, and motions for me to step inside. I roll my eyes at him before doing so.


	5. V

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -IV-**

"You should wait here," I tell Jette as I check my bruised ribs in the mirror. They feel somewhat better, but it doesn't help now that the ache started. My body is numb, right now. My arms itch. My scrapes whimper.

"You told me that last time, and you nearly died."

I glance at him.

He is leaning in the doorway and smoking a cigarette. Somehow he looks graceful, for the bulk of him. His eyes are elsewhere.

"I'm coming with you."

"They'll kill you, Jette, you know that. I'm what they want. For whatever reason."

He looks at me, and there is something empty and determined in his eyes. Something I used to see in my own when I would wake up and prepare to go to work for a clan of murderers. Loyalty.

"I told you to go alone last time because I couldn't do anything for you. It's not the same this time. The reason you're going, it's not what it was. This is something different. Something I can help with."

"Jette," I start to say, trying to think of a way to explain what may happen if I go back. What Annie and Mao both wanted and never really said out loud.

Another glance at his eyes in the mirror tells me that I don't need to.

"As much as you try to deny it, you're still ISSP, Jette. They'll smell it on you a mile away. I don't relish the idea of getting my partner killed."

He turns away from me, quietly, then. And I read it in the curl of the smoke from his cigarette before he opens his mouth to speak. "Are you sure you know what you're walking into here?" If you want to kill yourself, that's your problem.

"No, but then I never am."

I died before, Jette. I don't intend to do it now.

"There you go again, acting completely on impulse." I won't stop you. But I don't like this.

Jette's watched at least two partners die. I guess he just can't stand to think of it happening to another one.

With a faint smile, I leave the room, heading out towards the Swordfish. He'll follow, I know, but only as a backup measure.


	6. VI

**CB: Dealer's Hand, -VI-**

"I must say it's a pleasure to finally see you in the flesh, aunt."

The voice is charming. A puff of smoke is blown from behind a chair that has its back towards me. Black leather in a plush, golden interior. Whatever else of our heritage the family seems to value, this great nephew of mine seems to value the Chinese part of his. I see it as he turns the chair around, smiling pleasantly at me.

The smile is cold. And so are his eyes. He is too young to be so cold. I shrug slightly. "So you've seen me otherwise?"

"Sleeping beauty has finally returned to her castle," he says cryptically. "You were grandfather's favorite child."

"I asked you a question." I cock my hips to one side and fold my arms over each other. He clears his throat.

He doesn't look very Chinese for all his pretending.

"Even if you can forget yourself, the family doesn't forget its own. We were sent pictures from the hospital when you awoke three years ago. And of course, I've seen your wanted posters. You certainly do get around, aunt."

He leans back in his chair and glances at me over the end of his cigarette.

"What's the point of all this?" My hands itch. I want one too, but I won't let him know that I need that sort of comfort right now. Showing weakness to your enemy only ever gets you in trouble.

Instead of asking for a cigarette, I yawn and refold my arms on my chest, glancing at the paintings around the room and brushing off his attention.

"You've been back to the house. You've seen what's left of it."

"So?" I step over to a bookshelf and inspect the contents of it, not really paying much attention, but knowing that it's better than giving him the upper hand.

"If you've been back, you must have started to remember things. Some of which could be very useful to us."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I stretch, brushing my hair back from my face, and feeling the cuts of the cards stinging on my back as I shift the muscles there.

I smile a little.

"You were never really in all that debt, you know. That was the scheming doctor's attempt to get out of you what I want to know now," his voice gets an edge.

I turn to look at him in silence for a long moment.

"Which you still haven't told me yet, _nephew_," I say. He flinches, much to my satisfaction, and his chagrin. I guess he's never been startled by a woman openly, or at the very least it pisses him off. "And for the record, I'd like a name."

He narrows his eyes, the smile on his lips turning mean. "What is that phrase… ah yes. Learn to live with disappointment."


End file.
